There was a landowner who planted a vineyard,
put a hedge around it,
dug a wine press in it, and built a tower.
We are the vineyard, created and established by God himself.
Then he leased it to tenants and went on a journey.
We are also the tenants, responsible for the vineyard while landowner is on a journey.
We were made by God and are responsible to him to provide produce in due season. We are stewards of the being we have received from God. The very substance of who we are is a gift that is on loan from him. We are to care for it and prepare it as an offering back to him.
When vintage time drew near,
he sent his servants to the tenants to obtain his produce.
God sends his servants to help to prepare us to make the offering back to him of our time, talent, and treasure, indeed of our very lives. But we are reluctant to respond to these servants. To the degree that their message is uncomfortable we are all too ready to turn aggressively against it by ignoring or critiquing it, asserting our power and self will over the gift of servants sent to help us bear fruit.
Again he sent other servants, more numerous than the first ones,
but they treated them in the same way.
Do we see any patterns like this in our lives, where God appears to be trying to teach us something, but the more he tries the more we harden our hearts in response? Yes, these servants are asking us to let go of things we've been holding tightly. But the purpose of the fruit we bear is not ultimately for ourselves. If we try to hoard it we have excesses beyond what we need, it does not make us happy, and eventually much of it spoils.
Finally, he sent his son to them,
thinking, ‘They will respect my son.’
Will we respect the Son of God when he comes to us to show us how to live our lives as an offering to God? Or will we rather try to persist in our rebellion, in our attempt to take the vineyard for ourselves alone, and to live in willful ignorance of the landowner and his will?
Come, let us kill him and acquire his inheritance.
We can't truly have the inheritance apart from the landowner. But to our fallen human minds this seems like a possibility, like a live option. It is foolish, except that it seems to us to be simply defending things as they are and opposing threats to the status quo. We easily convince ourselves that we deserve to hold the fruit. We justify it with self pity about what we've been through or pride about what we deserve, but all without reference to the original gift and the reason it was given.
Therefore, I say to you,
the Kingdom of God will be taken away from you
and given to a people that will produce its fruit.
The Lord desires to take the reins from our old and sinful self and give them back to us recreated in grace by the power of the Holy Spirit, willing and able to produce the fruit of the Kingdom. Our old selves will fight against this, flailing and thrashing to cling to the when things have been. But we have been reconstructed into an edifice that is able to withstand the assault of our old self as long because Jesus himself is our cornerstone.
The stone that the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone;
by the Lord has this been done,
and it is wonderful in our eyes?
Joseph was an example of the way in which the blessing of one is intended to redound to the blessing of all. How much better it might have been for the brothers to agree with the will of the father and not try to insist on taking matters into their own hands.
and he had made him a long tunic.
When his brothers saw that their father loved him best of all his sons,
they hated him so much that they would not even greet him.
Yet for Joseph and Jesus, our rejection of them was not the final story. The Lord is more than able to work with our mistakes and bring his plans to pass even through our disobedience. But this is the hard way, the way of famine and exile. It is the way, sometimes, of excess, but never of joy or peace. Let us lay down our perceived rights, not to the world, but to God who created us. He knows what is best for us, what will make us to flourish, better than we know it ourselves.
The king sent and released him,
the ruler of the peoples set him free.
He made him lord of his house
and ruler of all his possessions.
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